Radiance News
5 January 2024
On December 28th, 2023, the New York Times released a report claiming to be an impartial and fair investigation into the events of October 7th, particularly focusing on the claims that Hamas carried out acts of sexual violence. Spanning over 3500 words, it claimed to have verified incidents of rape. The accusations of sexual violence against Hamas have been weaponized in the anti-Palestinian narrative across the world. While any and all claims of sexual violence, even if one-off incidents, must be investigated seriously, the lack of clear evidence and testimonies in the Times report raised eyebrows even at the time of the release.
On 30th December, Speak Up: A Feminist Initiative to Support Victims of Violence in all Forms released a statement titled “NYT’s Disgraceful “Investigation”: Weaponizing Sexual Violence Against Women for Occupation Propaganda” which listed out the problems in the report including the absence of direct victim testimonies and the fact that the report relies primarily on unverified claims of Israel’s police units.
According to the organization, “The report acknowledges that no survivors have spoken publicly and that the police have not collected any semen samples from women’s bodies, nor have they requested autopsies or conducted thorough examinations of crime scenes.”
Additionally, Israel declined to cooperate with the UN commission investigating these allegations, citing bias, and refused to provide any evidence.
The organization gave a detailed 13-point rebuttal to the report, raising questions on many of the aspects of the Times report, including its sensationalism and contradictions.
According to them, the key takeaways that point to holes in the report are: a lack of forensic evidence, questionable testimonies which do not stand up to scrutiny, a reliance on eyewitnesses who have previously spread misinformation, an absence of victim involvement, and the report’s emotive language which has a potential for misinformation.
Additionally, as Mondoweiss has also reported, the report also relies on ZAKA as a source: “ZAKA is one of the leading organizations alleging Hamas atrocities on October 7. But the organization’s volunteers have systematically given false testimonies, and continue repeating them to journalists on behalf of the Israeli government.”
More recently, Mondoweiss has come out with a report which reveals that the family of a key case in the Times report has renounced the story and has said that the reporters have manipulated them. The Times story hinged on the story of Gal Abdush. But her family says there is no proof she was raped, and that Times reporters interviewed them under false pretenses. The investigation hinged majorly on one story – the alleged rape of “Gal Abdush,” who is described by the Times as “The Woman in the Black Dress.”
Times prominently featured Gal Abdush’s family – a working-class Mizrahi Jewish family who tragically lost their daughter and son-in-law, Nagi Abdush. Mondoweiss traces the contradictions in the report, including the main source behind the story, a far-right individual, Eden Wessely who testified to the Times that Abdush was raped. However, Wessely’s claims have been rejected by Abdush’s friends and family and she has been known to spread misinformation and anti-Palestinian hate online.
This is a serious breach of journalistic ethics which raises questions on how deeply mainstream news institutions have become embedded in Zionist methods of hasbara and misinformation. At a time when Arabs and Muslims in Muslim minority countries are facing severe Islamophobia and racism even for wearing a keffiyeh or supporting Gazans, such deliberate misinformation fuels the flames of hatred and obscures any attempt to truly understand if any human rights excesses have taken place in the early days of the current violence.
